At 09:31 PM 4/11/99 -0700, you wrote:

Anyway, here's the obligatory link to the place where I store the
rest of my stuff:  http://www.humbug.org.au/~wendigo/transp.html

Commentary is welcomed and appreciated.

All pontifications are strictly from my omphalos, and offered
on an altar of obsidian.

Ia!  Ia!  

Eidolons

Two - Sanctum

I fellowed sleep who kissed me in the brain,
Let fall the tear of time; the sleeper^�s eye,

sleeper's  {the apostrophe came out as a non-ASCII character.
Weird that it's the only one.}

Odd, that.

not be the last.  The zoogs themselves were immune to the effects
of most of the fungi, and in fact served a useful purpose for
this one by distributing its seeds in their spoor after they 

{While "spoor" ("a track or trail, esp. of a wild animal") might
fit here, context seems to indicate that perhaps "dung" or "droppings"
might fit better; I'm not sure.  Up to you...}

I think I'll use 'dung'.  It sounds suitably Lovecraftian.  :)

in his throat and looked around for escape but there was no 
escape because the cats were everywhere with claws and teeth so
bright and hard and sharp and terrible.

{Technically, I suppose there are too many "and"s in this sentence,
but I think they work well to convey the relentlessness of the
situation from Ranma's POV, so "bii-da!" to any naysayers.}

Exactly.

{I have the same "problem".  :) }

Gosh.  Disobeying grammatical rules when it enchances the story?  Be still
my heart.  :)
 

     Into the night they ran together, leaping and bounding
through the fields and hills.  They climbed tall trees and called
their names to the stars from the tops of them.  They frightened 
flocks of silver- and ebony-winged birds into startled flight 
from their sleepy nests in the long grass.

{This strikes me as a REAL bad place and time to be a bird or a
small, furry mammal.  :) }

The hunt is on.  :)

     It was a city composed of pillars and heavy blocks of stone, 
low squat buildings and slender towers whose spires seemed to 
prod the stars.  Dark granite, pale marble and black basalt 
dominated, as if the city had been born from the lunar landscape 
itself and strived like a child to emulate its parent.

and had striven, like a child, to  {perhaps?  I'm at the limits of
my ability here...}

Hmm... I think 'strove' might be the right word.  I'll have to check.

studded with iron nails for claws and whiskers.  Nearby, a chubby 
white cat with big blue eyes raised one paw in seeming blessing 
of the tiny brood of delicate porcelain kittens at his feet.

{heh.  I have one of those somewhere.  :) }

I wish I could remember what they're called.  "Manekki-neko" statues, or
something like that.

     Ranma stood on his hind legs and balanced on the wall to
gaze directly at one of the odder paintings.  A great lion stood 
amidst a winter landscape.  Around him, the snow was melting and 
flowers were springing up from the grass.  Human children knelt 
at his feet and wove the blossoms into his mane without fear.

{uh... anyone we know?  :) }

I swear that I wrote this part before Angus wrote that message about the
surplus of Lovecraft crossovers, and the deficit of Narnia ones.  :)
  

     Be a crucible to me, he begged of the goddess.  Let me
please you.  Take from me this wrong that I have done and let me
be beautiful in your eyes.

{Aiya.  Ranma's cat-side is pleading for deliverance from his human
side?  I... never thought of it that way before.}

Well... consider it.  The cat-side gets to spend a LOT more time locked up
in Ranma's psyche than Ranma spends trapped in Neko-ken mode.  No wonder
it's so frisky when it finally gets out.
 

sheeted darkness.  The goddess had transformed him into a form 
more pleasing to her eye; he was shaped like a housecat, though 
large as a lynx, and his fur was the colour of flames.  His eyes 
were the bright and piercing blue of a newborn kitten.

kitten's.  {unless it's a really weird kitten, which I suppose is
plausible under the circumstances.  :) }

Nope.  You're right.  :)
 

a beautiful woman.  Then again, there are better ways, 
particularly when you can't remember her name or how you got 
here, but you can remember that by every law of the universe you 
know, your fiancee is going to walk in and clobber the hell out 
of you at any moment.

{Bwahahaha!  Poor Ranma... good thing he's not in the universe
he knows, isn't it?}

Eeyup.  He got lucky.  :)

     There had been... moss.  And cats.  Lots of cats.  He
couldn't remember anything else.  He certainly couldn't 
remember how he had ended up here.  The woman sat up, dangling
long and almost bare legs over the edge of the bed.  Her garments
were white and silky, and practically translucent.  Ranma vowed
that if he ever got back home, he was going to have a long
discussion with Cologne.

{"Hey, Cologne, where can I get some outfits like that in Akane's
size, huh?"  :) }

"From the Olympus Lingerie catalogue.  It's divine."

moving lithely to the floor and lying down on her stomach.  She
rested her chin on her hands and placed her elbows on the floor
as she kicked one long leg up into the air.  Ranma got a sight
deep into the depths of her tunic, and the rich glitter of gold
necklaces amidst the cleavage of her rounded breasts was not
nearly as enticing as the purely natural sights therein.

     "Bahh," Ranma said.  

{Good thing Ranma's been inured to such things... well, mostly.  :) }

Bast's better-built than Shampoo, and has more experience.  :)

     "Hmm?"  She took his head between both hands and pulled him
up to a sitting position, until their faces were only inches
apart.  "Cat got your tongue?"

{groan}

I'm sorry.  I couldn't resist.  :)

     Ranma decided to turn on the charm.  "Look, this is all
really interestin' and stuff, and I'd love to stay around and
hear all about it, but I've been gone a long time and Akane's
probably gettin' mad, so if you'd just tell me how to get out of
this place and back to Earth, I'd be really grateful."

{Oh, perfect.}

I like this scene because I feel confident Ranma would respond like this in
such a situation.  :)

     "I have done you a favour."  Barely-constrained savagery 
echoed in her voice.  "Now you shall do me one."

{Suggest "do me a service."  Even if a god must make an equal pact
with a mortal, it seems to me that the god would avoid referring to
it as such.  Got to keep us in our place, yes?}

Yeah, that sounds better.

pillars.  A layer of grey dust covered the broken cobblestones of
the courtyard.  He drew a gasping breath and staggered up to his
feet, then walked out to where a road of black basalt cut down 
through an enormous city filled with buildings whose shapes all
seemed subtly wrong, as if built to a scale and geometry that was 
not that of humans.

{Lots of basalt... oddly enough, there's lots and lots of basalt
on our Moon, too.  All the dark bits, the maria, are basalt.  IIRC,
Lovecraft used "basalt" a lot because it's an uncommon rock to
most people, but to one who grew up in Hawaii, where 9 rocks in 10
are basalt, it's... um... not.  :) }

Well, to those of us in the Far North, it's an uncommon rock, okay?  ;p
(We don't see a lot of rock in Canada, due to the continual snowfall
obscuring it).

Good thing Ranma wasn't put in a position to be freed of his
Jusenkyo curse... methinks the consequnces of THAT would be even
more dire.

Yeah.  Plus, they've been done to death.  :)

The weird thing (well, one weird thing) is that I'm beginning
to suspect what you hinted at in the prologue: Ranma is not
only capable of returning from journeys into the Dreamlands
with acceptable losses, he is just the sort of person who might
become, well, addicted to adventuring there.  

Yup.  And there's challenge here... there's an entire world to discover.
He'd love it.

Ranma's never

happier than when he hangs his own butt out so much farther
than anyone else thinks is possible, only to pull it back again;
he's just the sort of overconfident adrenalin-junkie that
would be drawn back again and again to seek excitement there.

Until he fails his SAN check.  :)

Another weird thing is that Eidolons is so much fun to read that
I don't mind that it's probably delaying WUE more than a little.

Actually, this second chapter has been done for a while... I just decided
to release it because the third chapter has seen some progress.  WUE37 is
going a lot faster than I expected... it's at around 1000 lines now...
maybe by next weekend, I'm hoping.

Thanks for writing and sharing!

Thanks for the usual detailed C&C, Vince.  Insightful and useful as always.

Ciao,
-Alan Harnum